of Agriculture. Houston,(<ref>Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. Louis.</ref>)

+

of Agriculture. Houston,<ref>Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. Louis.</ref>I should say, of the men that I know. You will find my estimate

−

I should say, of the men that I know. You will find my estimate

+

of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van Hise(<ref>Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of Wisconsin.</ref>)may be as good or even better if

−

of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van Hise(<ref>Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of Wisconsin.</ref>) may be as good or even better if

<br><br><FONT FACE="Times">I've &quot;put it up&quot; to the new President

<br><br><FONT FACE="Times">I've &quot;put it up&quot; to the new President

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>Most heartily always yours,

<br><br>Most heartily always yours,

−

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>

+

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>

−

<br><br>Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department,

+

Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department,

he much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided

he much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided

upon him for a post which the new President probably regarded

upon him for a post which the new President probably regarded

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January 26, 1913.

January 26, 1913.

<br><br>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

<br><br>MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

−

<br><br>This has been &quot;Board&quot;(<ref>The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the General Education Boards. Back to text.</ref>)

+

<br><br>This has been &quot;Board&quot;<ref>The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the General Education Boards. Back to text.</ref>week, as you know. The men came from all quarters of the land,

−

week, as you know. The men came from all quarters of the land,

+

and we had a good time. New work is opening; old work is going

and we had a good time. New work is opening; old work is going

well; the fellowship ran in good tide---except that everybody

well; the fellowship ran in good tide---except that everybody

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<hr>

<hr>

+

<references/>

<references/>

Latest revision as of 04:53, 29 January 2009

IT WAS Page's interest in the material and spiritual elevation
of the masses that first directed his attention to the Presidential
aspirations of Woodrow Wilson. So much history has been made since
1912 that the public questions which then stirred the popular
mind have, largely passed out of recollection. Yet the great rallying
cry of that era was democracy, spelled with a small "d."
In the fifty years since the Civil War only one Democratic President
had occupied the White House. The Republicans' long lease of power
had produced certain symptoms which their political foes now proceeded
to describe as great public abuses. The truth of the matter, of
course, is that neither political virtue nor political depravity
was the exclusive possession of either of the great national organizations.
The Republican party, especially under the enlightened autocracy
of Roosevelt, had started such reforms as conservation, the improvement
of country life, the regulation of the railroads, and the warfare
on the trusts, and had shown successful interest in such evidences
of the new day as child labour laws, employer's liability laws,
corrupt practice acts, direct primaries and the popular election
of United States Senators---not all perhaps wise as methods, but
all certainly inspired with a new conception of democratic government.
Roosevelt also had led in the onslaught on that corporation influence
which, after all, constituted the great problem of American politics.
But Mr. Taft's administration had impressed many men, and especially
Page, as a discouraging slump back into the ancient system. Page
was never blind to the inadequacies of his own party; the three
campaigns of Bryan and his extensive influence with the Democratic
masses at times caused him deep despair; that even the corporations
had extended their tentacles into the ranks of Jefferson was all
too obvious a fact; yet the Democratic party at that time Page
regarded as the most available instrument for embodying in legislation
and practice the new things in which he most believed. Above all,
the Democratic party in 1912 possessed one asset to which the
Republicans could lay no claim---a new man, a new leader, the
first statesman who had crossed its threshold since Grover Cleveland.

Like many scholarly Americans, Page had been charmed by the
intellectual brilliancy of Woodrow Wilson. The utter commonplaceness
of much of what passes for political thinking in this country
had for years discouraged him. American political life may have
possessed energy, character, even greatness; but it was certainly
lacking in distinction. It was this new quality that Wilson brought,
and it was this that attracted thousands of cultivated Americans
to his standard, irrespective of party. The man was an original
thinker; he exercised the priceless possession of literary style.
He entertained; he did not weary; even his temperamental deficiencies,
which were apparent to many observers in 1912, had at least the
advantage that attaches to the interesting and the unusual.

What Page and thousands of other public-spirited men saw in
Wilson was a leader of fine intellectual gifts who was prepared
to devote his splendid energies to making life more attractive
and profitable to the "Forgotten Man." Here was the
opportunity then, to embody in one imaginative statesman all the
interest which for a generation had been accumulating in favour
of the democratic revival. At any rate, after thirty years of
Republican half-success and half-failure, here was the chance
for a new deal. Amid a mob of shopworn public men, here was one
who had at least the charm of novelty.

Page had known Mr. Wilson for thirty years, and all this time
the Princeton scholar had seemed to him to be one of the most
helpful influences at work in the United States. As already noted
Page had met the future President when he was serving a journalistic
apprenticeship in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson was then spending his
days in a dingy law office and was putting to good use the time
consumed in waiting for the clients who never came by writing
that famous book on "Congressional Government" which
first lifted his name out of obscurity. This work, the product
of a man of twenty-nine, was perhaps the first searching examination
to which the American Congressional system had ever been subjected.
It brought Wilson a professorship at the newly established Bryn
Mawr College and drew to him other growing minds like Page's.
"Watch that man!"' was Page's admonition to his friends.
Wilson then went into academic work and Page plunged into the
exactions of daily and periodical journalism, but Page's papers
show that the two men had kept in touch with each other during
the succeeding thirty years. These papers include a collection
of letters from Woodrow Wilson, the earliest of which is dated
October 30, 1885, when the future President was beginning his
career at Bryn Mawr. He was eager to come to New York, Wilson
said, and discuss with Page "half a hundred topics"
suggested by "Congressional Government." The atmosphere
at Bryn Mawr was evidently not stimulating. "Such a talk
would give me a chance to let off some of the enthusiasm I am
just now painfully stirring up in enforced silence." The
Forum and the Atlantic Monthly, when Page was editor,
showed many traces of his interest in Wilson, who was one of his
most frequent contributors. When Wilson became President of Princeton,
he occasionally called upon his old Atlantic friend for
advice. He writes to Page on various matters---to ask for suggestions
about filling a professorship or a lectureship; and there are
also references to the difficulties Wilson is having with the
Princeton trustees.

Page's letters also portray the new hopes with which Wilson
inspired him. One of his best loved correspondents was Henry Wallace,
editor of Wallace's Farmer, a homely and genial Rooseveltian.
Page was one of those who immensely admired Roosevelt's career;
but he regarded him as a man who had finished his work, at least
in domestic affairs, and whose great claim upon posterity would
be as the stimulator of the American conscience. "I see you
are coming around to Wilson," Page writes, "and in pretty
rapid fashion. I assure you that that is the solution of the problem.
I have known him since we were boys, and I have been studying
him lately with a great deal of care. I haven't any doubt but
that is the way out. The old labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican'
have ceased to have any, meaning, not only in my mind and in yours,
but I think in the minds of nearly all the people. Don't you feel
that way?"

The campaign of 1912 was approaching its end when this letter
was written; and no proceeding in American politics had so aroused
Page's energies. He had himself played a part in Wilson's nomination.
He was one of the first to urge the Princeton President to seize
the great opportunity that was rising before him These suggestions
were coming from many sources in the summer of 1910; Mr. Wilson
was about to retire from the Presidency of Princeton; the movement
had started to make him Governor of New Jersey, and it was well
understood that this was merely intended as the first step to
the White House. But Mr. Wilson was himself undecided; to escape
the excitement of the moment he had retired to a country house
at Lyme, Connecticut. In this place, in response to a letter,
Page now sought him out. His visit was a plea that Mr. Wilson
should accept his proffered fate; the Governorship of New Jersey,
then the Presidency, and the opportunity to promote the causes
in which both men believed.

"But, do you think I can do it, Page?" asked the
hesitating Wilson.

"I am sure you can": and then Page again, with his
customary gusto, launched into his persuasive argument. His host
at one moment would assent; at another present the difficulties;
it was apparent that he was having trouble in reaching a decision.
To what extent Page's conversation converted him the record does
not disclose; it is apparent, however, that when, in the next
two years, difficulties came, his mind seemed naturally to turn
in Page's direction. Especially noticeable is it that he appeals
to Page for help against his fool friends. An indiscreet person
in New Jersey is booming Mr. Wilson for the Presidency; the activity
of such a man inevitably brings ridicule upon the object of his
attention; cannot Page find some kindly way of calling him off?
Mr. Wilson asks Page's advice about a campaign manager, and incidentally
expresses his own aversion to a man of "large calibre"
for this engagement. There were occasional conferences with Mr.
Wilson on his Presidential prospects, one of which took place
at Page's New York apartment. Page was also the man who brought
Mr. Wilson and Colonel House together; this had the immediate
result of placing the important state of Texas on the Wilson side,
and, as its ultimate consequence, brought about one of the most
important associations in the history of American politics. Page
had known Colonel House for many years and was the advocate who
convinced the sagacious Texan that Woodrow Wilson was the man.
Wilson also acquired the habit of referring to Page men who offered
themselves to him as volunteer workers in his cause. "Go
and see Walter Page" was his usual answer to this kind of
an approach. But Page was not a collector of delegates to nominating
conventions; not his the art of manipulating these assemblages
in the interest of a favoured man; yet his services to the Wilson
cause, while less demonstrative, were almost as practical. His
talent lay in exposition; and he now took upon himself the task
of spreading Wilson's fame. In his own magazine and in books published
by his firm, in letters to friends, in personal conferences, he
set forth Wilson's achievements. Page also persuaded Wilson to
make his famous speechmaking trip through the Western States in
1911 and this was perhaps his largest definite contribution to
the Wilson campaign. It was in the course of this historic pilgrimage
that the American masses obtained their first view of a previously
too-much hidden figure.

On election day Page wrote the President-elect a letter of
congratulation which contains one item of the greatest interest.
When the time came for the new President to deliver his first
message to Congress, he surprised the country by abandoning the
usual practice of sending a long written communication to be droned
out by a reading clerk to a yawning company of legislators. He
appeared in person and read the document himself. As President
Harding has followed his example it seems likely that this innovation,
which certainly represents a great improvement over the old routine,
has become the established custom. The origin of the idea therefore
has historic value.

To Woodrow Wilson

Garden City, N. Y.
Election Day, 1912. [Nov. 5]

MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT:

Before going into town to hear the returns, I write you my
congratulations. Even if you were defeated, I should still congratulate
you on putting a Presidential campaign on a higher level than
it has ever before reached since Washington's time. Your grip
became firmer and your sweep wider every week. It was inspiring
to watch the unfolding of the deep meaning of it and to see the
people's grasp of the main idea. It was fairly, highly, freely,
won, and now we enter the Era of Great Opportunity. It is hard
to measure the extent or the thrill of the new interest in public
affairs and the new hope that you have aroused in thousands of
men who were becoming hopeless under the long-drawn-out reign
of privilege.

To the big burden of suggestions that you are receiving, may
I add these small ones?

1. Call Congress in extra session mainly to revise the tariff
and incidentally to prepare the way for rural credit societies.

Mr. Taft set the stage admirably in 1909 when he promptly
called an extra session; but then he let the villain run the
play. To get the main job in hand at once will be both dramatic
and effective and it will save time. Moreover, it will give you
this great tactical advantage---you can the better keep in line
those who have debts or doubts before you have answered their
importunities for offices and for favours.

The time is come when the land must be developed by the new
agriculture and farming made a business. This calls for money.
Every acre will repay a reasonable loan on long time at a fair
interest rate, and group-borrowing develops the men quite as
much as the men will develop the soil. It saved the German Empire
and is remaking Italy. And this is the proper use of much of
the money that now flows into the reach of the credit barons.
This building up of farm life will restore the equilibrium of
our civilization and, besides, will prove to be one half the
solution of our currency and credit problem. . . .

2. Set your trusted friends immediately to work, every man
in the field he knows best, to prepare briefs for you on such
great subjects and departments as the Currency, the Post Office,
Conservation, Rural Credit, the Agricultural Department, which
has the most direct power for good to the most people---to make
our farmers as independent as Denmark's and to give our best
country folk the dignity of the old-time English gentleman ---this
expert, independent information to compare with your own knowledge
and with official reports.

3. The President reads (or speaks) his Inaugural to the people.
Why not go back to the old custom of himself delivering his Messages
to Congress? Would that not restore a feeling of comradeship
in responsibility and make the Legislative branch feel nearer
to the Executive? Every President of our time has sooner or later
got away with Congress.

I cannot keep from saying what a new thrill of hope and tingle
of expectancy I feel-as of a great event about to happen for
our country and for the restoration of popular government; for
you will keep your rudder true.

Most heartily yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

To Governor Wilson,
Princeton, N. J.

.

Page was one of the first of Mr. Wilson's friends to discuss
with the President-elect the new legislative programme. The memorandum
which he made of this interview shows how little any one, in 1912,
appreciated the tremendous problems that Mr. Wilson would have
to face. Only domestic matters then seemed to have the slightest
importance. Especially significant is the fact that even at this
early date, Page was chiefly impressed by Mr. Wilson's "loneliness."

Memorandum
dated November 15, 1912

To use the Government, especially the Department of Agriculture
and the Bureau of Education, to help actively in the restoration
of country life--that's the great chance for Woodrow Wilson,
ten days ago elected President. Precisely how well he understands
this chance, how well, for example, he understands the grave
difference between the Knapp Demonstration method of teaching
farmers and the usual Agricultural College method of lecturing
to them, and what he knows about the rising movement for country
schools of the right sort, and agricultural credit societies---how
all this great constructive problem of Country Life lies in his
mind, who knows? I do not. If I do not know, who does know? The
political managers who have surrounded him these six months have
now done their task. They know nothing of this Big Chance
and Great Outlook. And for the moment they have left him alone.
In two days he will go to Bermuda for a month to rest and to
meditate. He ought to meditate on this Constructive programme.
It seemed my duty to go and tell him about it. I asked for an
interview and he telegraphed to go to-day. at five o'clock.

Arthur and I drove in the car and reached Princeton just before
five---a beautiful drive of something less than four hours from
New York. Presently we arrived at the Wilson house.

"The Governor is engaged," I was informed by the
man who opened the door. "He can see nobody. He is going
away to-morrow."

"I have an appointment with him," said I, and I
gave him my card.

"I know he can't see anybody."

"Will you send my card in?"

We waited at the door till the maid took it in and returned
to say the Governor would presently come down.

The reception room had a desk in the corner, and on a row
of chairs across the whole side of the room were piles of unopened
letters. It is a plain, modestly but decently furnished room,
such as you would expect to find in the modest house of a professor
at Princeton. During his presidency of the college, he had lived
in the President's house in the college yard. This was his own
house of his professorial days.

"Hello, Page, come out here: I am glad to see you."
There he stood in a door at the back of the room, which led to
his library and work room. "Come back here."

"In the best of all possible worlds, the right thing
does sometimes happen," said I.

"Yes."

"And a great opportunity."

He smiled and was cordial and said some pleasant words. But
he was weary. "I have cobwebs in my head." He was not
depressed but oppressed---rather shy, I thought, and I should
say rather lonely. The campaign noise and the little campaigners
were hushed and gone. There were no men of companionable size
about him, and the Great Task lay before him. The Democratic
party has not brought forward large men in public life during
its long term of exclusion from the Government; and the newly
elected President has had few opportunities and a very short
time to make acquaintances of a continental kind. This little
college town, this little hitherto corrupt state, are both small.

I went at my business without delay. The big country-life
idea, the working of great economic forces to put its vitalization
within sight, the coming equilibrium by the restoration of country
life---all coincident with his coming into the Presidency. His
Administration must fall in with it, guide it, further it. The
chief instruments are the Agricultural Department, the Bureau
of Education, and the power of the President himself to bring
about Rural Credit Societies and similar organized helps. He
quickly saw the difference between Demonstration Work by the
Agricultural Department and the plan to vote large sums to agricultural
colleges and to the states to build up schools.

"Who is the best man for Secretary of Agriculture?"

"I ought to have known, but I didn't. For who is?

"May I look about and answer your question later?"

"Yes, I will thank you."

"I wish to find the very best men for my Cabinet, regardless
of consequences. I do not forget the party as an instrument of
government, and I do not wish to do violence to it. But I must
have the best men in the Nation"---with a very solemn tone
as he sat bolt upright, with a stern look on his face, and a
lonely look.

I told him my idea of the country school that must be and
talked of the Bureau of Education. He saw quickly and assented
to all my propositions.

And then we talked somewhat more conservatively of Conservation,
about which he knows less.

I asked if he would care to have me make briefs about the
Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, the Rural Credit
Societies, and Conservation. "I shall be very grateful,
if it be not too great a sacrifice."

I had gained that permission, which (if he respect my opinion)
ought to guide him somewhat toward a real understanding of how
the Government may help toward our Great Constructive Problem.

I gained also the impression that he has no sympathy with
the idea of giving government grants to schools and agricultural
colleges---a very distinct impression.

I had been with him an hour and had talked (I fear) too much.
But he seemed hearty in his thanks. He came to the front door
with me, insisted on helping me on with my coat, envied me the
motor-car drive in the night back to New York, spoke to eight
or ten reporters, who had crowded into the hall for their interview---a
most undignified method, it seemed to me, for a President-elect
to reach the public; I stepped out on the muddy street, and,
as I walked to the Inn, I had the feeling of the man's oppressive
loneliness as he faced his great task. There is no pomp of circumstance,
nor hardly dignity in this setting, except the dignity of his
seriousness and his loneliness.

There was a general expectation that Page would become a member
of President Wilson's Cabinet, and the place for which he seemed
particularly qualified was the Secretaryship of Agriculture.
The smoke of battle had hardly passed away, therefore, when Page's
admirers began bringing pressure to bear upon the President-elect.
There was probably no man in the United States who had such completely
developed views about this Department as Page; and it is not
improbable that, had circumstances combined to offer him this
position, he would have accepted it. But fate in matters of this
sort is sometimes kinder than a man's friends. Page had a great
horror of anything which suggested office-seeking, and the campaign
which now was started in his interest greatly embarrassed him.
He wrote Mr. Wilson, disclaiming all responsibility and begging
him to ignore these misguided efforts. As the best way of checking
the movement, Page now definitely answered Mr. Wilson's question:
Who was the best man for the Agricultural Department? It is interesting
to note that the candidate whom Page nominated in this letter---a
man who had been his friend for many years and an associate on
the Southern Education Board---was the man whom Mr. Wilson chose.

.

To Woodrow Wilson

Garden City, N. Y.
November 27, 1912.

MY DEAR WILSON:

I send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to rest)
the shortest statement that I could make about the demonstration
field-work of the Department of Agriculture. This is the best
tool yet invented to shape country life. Other (and shorter)
briefs will he ready in a little while.

You asked me who I thought was the best man for Secretary
of Agriculture. Houston,[1]I should say, of the men that I know. You will find my estimate
of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van Hise([2])may be as good or even better if
he be young in mind and adaptable enough. But he seems to me
a man who may already have done his big job.

I answer the other questions you asked at Princeton and I
have taken the liberty to send some memoranda about a few other
men---on the theory that every friend of yours ought now to tell
you with the utmost frankness about the men he knows, of whom
you may be thinking.

The building up of the countryman is the big constructive
job of our time. When the countryman comes to his own, the town
man will no longer be able to tax, and to concentrate power,
and to bully the world.

Very heartily yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

.

To Henry Wallace

Garden City, N. Y.
11 March, 1913.

MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY:

What a letter yours is! By George I we must get on the job,
you and I, of steering the world---get on it a little more actively.
Else it may run amuck. We have frightful responsibilities in
this matter. The subject weighs the more deeply and heavily on
me because I am just back from a month's vacation in North Carolina,
where I am going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow. No;
you would be disappointed if you went out of your way to see
my boys. Moreover, they are now merely clearing land. They sold
out the farm they put in shape, after two years' work, for just
ten times what it had cost, and they are now starting another
one de novo. About a year hence, they'll have something
to show. And next winter, when my house is built down there,
I want you to come and see me and see that country. I'll show
you one of the most remarkable farmers' clubs you ever saw and
many other interesting things as well---many, very many. I'm
getting into this farm business in dead earnest. That's the dickens
of it: how can I do my share in our partnership to run the universe
if I give my time to cotton-growing problems? It's a tangled
world.

Well, bless your soul! You and the younger Wallaces (my regards
to every one of them) and Poe[3]---you
are all very kind to think of me for that difficult place---too
difficult by far, for me. Besides, it would have cost me my life.
If I were to go into public life, I should have had to sell my
whole interest here. This would have meant that I could never
make another dollar. More than that, I'd have thrown away a trade
that I've learned and gone at another one that I know little
about---a bad change, surely. So, you see, there never was anything
serious in this either in my mind or in the President's. Arthur
hit it off right one day when somebody asked him:

"Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture?"

He replied: "Not seriously."

Besides, the President didn't ask me! He knew too much for
that.

But he did ask me who would be a good man and I said "Houston."
You are not quite fair to him in your editorial. He does know-knows
much and well and is the strongest man in the Cabinet---in promise.
The farmers don't yet know him: that's the only trouble. Give
him a chance.

I've "put it up" to the new President
and to the new Secretary to get on the job immediately of organizing
country life. I've drawn up a scheme (a darned good one,
too) which they have. I have good hope that they'll get to it
soon and to the thing that we have all been working toward. I'm
very hopeful about this. I told them both last week to get their
minds on this before the wolves devour them. Don't you think
it better to work with the Government and to try to steer it
right than to go off organizing other agencies?

God pity our new masters! The President is all right. He's
sound, earnest, courageous. But his party! I still have some
muscular strength. In certain remote regions they still break
stones in the road by hand. Now I'll break stones before I'd
have a job at Washington now. I spent four days with them last
week---the new crowd. They'll try their best. I think they'll
succeed. But, if they do succeed and survive, they'll come out
of the scrimmage bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and
run 'em, Uncle Henry. That's the only hope I see for the country.
Don't damn Houston, then, beforehand. He's a real man. Let's
get on the job and tell 'em how.

Now, when you come East, come before you need to get any of
your meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden City; and don't
be in a hurry when you get here. If a Presbyterian meeting be
necessary for your happiness, I'll drum up one on the Island
for you. And, of course, you must come to my house and pack up
right and get your legs steady sometime before you sail---you
and Mrs. Wallace: will she not go with you?

In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer the old
world right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to the wheel.
We'll work it all out here in the summer and verify it all (including
your job of setting the effete kingdoms of Europe all right)---we'll
verify it all next winter down in North Carolina. I think things
have got such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion,
till we check up the several items, political, ethical, agricultural,
journalistic, and international. God bless us all!

Most heartily always yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department,
he much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided
upon him for a post which the new President probably regarded
as more important---the Interior. The narrow margin with which
Page escaped this responsibility illustrates again the slender
threads upon which history is constructed. The episode is also
not without its humorous side. For there was only one reason why
Page did not enter the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior; and
that is revealed in the above letter to "Uncle Henry";
he was so busy planning his new house in the sandhills of North
Carolina that, while cabinets were being formed and great decisions
taken, he was absent from New York. A short time before the inauguration,
Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange a meeting with Page
in the latter's apartment. Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a Saturday;
the purpose was to offer him the Secretaryship of the Interior.
Colonel House called up Page's office at Garden City and was informed
that he was in North Carolina. Colonel House then telegraphed,
asking Page to start north immediately, and suggesting the succeeding
Monday as a good time for the interview. A reply was at once received
from Page that he was on his way.

Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson's advisers had heard of the
plan and were raising objections. Page was a Southerner; the Interior
Department has supervision over the pension bureau, with its hundreds
of thousands of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page
was an outspoken enemy of the whole pension system and had led
several "campaigns" against it. The appointment would
never do! Mr. Wilson himself was persuaded that it would be a
mistake.

"But what are we going to do about Page?" asked Colonel
House. "I have summoned him from North Carolina on important
business. What excuse shall I give for bringing him way up here?"

But the President-elect was equal to the emergency.

"Here's the cabinet list," he drily replied. "Show
it to Page. Tell him these are the people I have about decided
to appoint and ask him what he thinks of them. Then he will assume
that we summoned him to get his advice."

When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel House gave
him the list of names and solemnly asked him what he thought of
them. The first name that attracted Page's attention was that
of Josephus Daniels, as Secretary of the Navy. Page at once expressed
his energetic dissent.

"Why, don't you think he is Cabinet timber?" asked
Colonel House.

"Timber!" Page fairly shouted. "He isn't a splinter!
Have you got a time table? When does the next train leave for
Princeton? "

In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, earnestly
protesting against Mr. Daniels's appointment. But Mr. Wilson said
that he had already offered Mr. Daniels the place.

About the time of Wilson's election a great calamity befell
one of Page's dearest friends. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, the President
of the University of Virginia, one of the pioneer educational
forces in the Southern States, and for years an associate of Page
on the General Education Board, was stricken with tuberculosis.
He was taken to Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment
happily restored him to health. One of the dreariest aspects of
such an experience is its tediousness and loneliness. Yet the
maintenance of one's good spirits and optimism is an essential
part of the treatment. And it was in this work that Page now proved
an indispensable aid to the medical men. As soon as Dr. Alderman
found himself stretched out, a weak and isolated figure, cut off
from those activities and interests which had been his inspiration
for forty years, with no companions except his own thoughts and
a few sufferers like himself, letters began to arrive with weekly
regularity from the man whom he always refers to as "dear
old Page." The gayety and optimism of these letters, the
lively comments which they passed upon men and things, and their
wholesome and genial philosophy, were largely instrumental, Dr.
Alderman has always believed, in his recovery. Their effect was
so instant and beneficial that the physicians asked to have them
read to the other patients, who also derived abounding comfort
and joy from them. The whole episode was one of the most beautiful
in Page's life, and brings out again that gift for friendship
which was perhaps his finest quality. For this reason it is a
calamity that most of these letters have not been preserved. The
few that have survived are interesting not only in themselves;
they reveal Page's innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow
Wilson. That he admired the new President is evident, yet these
letters make it clear that, even in 1912 and 1913, there was something
about Mr. Wilson that caused him to hesitate, to entertain doubts,
to wonder how, after all, the experiment was to end.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, L. I.
December 31, 1912.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I have a new amusement, a new excitement, a new study, as
you have and as we all have who really believe in democracy---a
new study, a new hope, and sometimes a new fear; and its name
is Wilson. I have for many years regarded myself as an interested,
but always a somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the
democratic idea was real and safe and lifting, if we could ever
get it put into action, contenting myself ever with such patches
of it as time and accident and occasion now and then sewed on
our gilded or tattered garments. But now it is come---the real
thing; at any rate a man somewhat like us, whose thought and
aim and dream are our thought and aim and dream. That's enormously
exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become so interested in a
general proposition or in a governmental hope.

Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? How can we
help him do it? Now that the task is on him, does he really understand?
Do I understand him and he me? There's a certain unreality about
it.

The man himself---I find that nobody quite knows him now.
Alas! I wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally very
shy, having lived too much alone and far too much with women
(how I wish two of his daughters were sons!) this Big Thing having
descended on him before he knew or was quite prepared for it,
thrust into a whirl of self-seeking men even while he is trying
to think out the theory of the duties that press, knowing the
necessity of silence, surrounded by small people---well, I made
up my mind that his real friends owed it to him and to what we
all hope for, to break over his reserve and to volunteer help.
He asks for conferences with official folk ---only, I think.
So I began to write memoranda about those subjects of government
about which I know something and have opinions and about men
who are or who may be related to them. It has been great sport
to set down in words without any reserve precisely what you think.
It is imprudent, of course, as most things worth doing are. But
what have I to lose, I who have my life now planned and laid
out and have got far beyond the reach of gratitude or hatred
or praise or blame or fear of any man? I sent him some such memoranda.
Here came forthwith a note of almost abject thanks. I sent more.
Again, such a note---written in his own hand. Yet not a word
of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous in comparison. Then
here comes a mob of my good friends crying for office for me.
So I sent a ten-line note, by the hand of my secretary, saying
that this should not disturb my perfect frankness nor (I knew
it would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own hand,
of perfect understanding and with the very glow of gratitude.
And he talks---generalities to the public. Perhaps that's all
he can talk now. Wise? Yes. But does he know the men about him?
Does he really know men? Nobody knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope
I see--suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. Whether
it is going to work out or not-whether he or anybody can work
it out of the haze of theory---nobody, knows; and nobody's speculation
is better than mine and mine is worthless.

This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the doubthope
and the hopedoubt. I send this word about it to you (I could
and would to nobody else: you're snowbound, you see, and don't
write much and don't see many people: restrain your natural loquacity!)
But for the love of heaven tell me if you see any way very
clearly. It's a kind of misty dream to me.

I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? Of course
the answer's easy and I think creditable: I do profoundly hold
this democratic faith and believe that it can be worked into
action among men; and it may be I shall yet see it done. That's
the secret of my interest. But when this awful office descends
on a man, it oppresses him, changes him, you are not quite so
sure of him, you doubt whether he knows himself or you in the
old way.

And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government
or of democracy. They have not thought the thing out. They hold
no ordered creed of human organization or advancement. They leave
all to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance
determines it. And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I
have grown an inch by it.

I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of
Lake Saranac?

It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone I) have been
talking of democracy, of these very things I've written. The
bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this
particular year, to our liking.

We see all our children gone---half of them to nests of their
own building, the rest on errands of their own pleasure, and
we are left, young yet, but the main job of life behind us! We're
going down to a cottage in southern North Carolina (with our
own cook and motor car, praise God!) for February, still further
to think this thing out and incidentally to build us a library,
in which we'll live when we can. That, for convention's sake,
we call a Vacation.

Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll "get "
'em----those small enemies. The gain of twelve pounds tells the
story. The danger is, your season of philosophy and reverie will
be too soon ended. Don't fret; the work and the friends will
be here when you come down. There's many a long day ahead; and
there may not be so many seasons of rest and meditation. You
are the only man I know who has time enough to think out a clear
answer to this: "What ought to be done with Bryan? "
What can be done with Bryan? When you find the answer,
telegraph it to me.

I've a book or two more to send you. If they interest you,
praise the gods. If they bore you, fling 'em in the snow and
think no worse of me. You can't tell what a given book may be
worth to a given man in an unknown mood. They've become such
a commodity to me that I thank my stars for a month away from
them when I may come at 'em at a different angle and really need
a few old ones----Wordsworth, for instance. When you get old
enough, you'll wake up some day with the feeling that the world
is much more beautiful than it was when you were young, that
a landscape has a closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable,
that outdoor colour and motion are more splendidly audacious
and beautifully rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's
true. The gently snow-clad little pines out my window are more
to me than the whole Taft Administration. They'll soon be better
than the year's dividends. And the few great craftsmen in words
who can confirm this feeling---they are the masters you become
grateful for. Then the sordidness of the world lies far beneath
you and your great democracy is truly come---the democracy of
Nature. To be akin to a tree, in this sense, is as good as to
be akin to a man. I have a grove of little long-leaf pines down
in the old country and I know they'll have some consciousness
of me after all men have forgotten me: I've saved 'em, and they'll
sing a century of gratitude if I can keep 'em saved. Joe Holmes
gave me a dissertation on them the other day. He was down there
"on a little Sunday jaunt" of forty miles---the best
legs and the best brain that ever worked together in one anatomy.

A conquering New Year-that's what you'll find, begun before
this reaches you, carrying all good wishes from

Yours affectionately,

W. H. P.

.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, New York,
January 26, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

This has been "Board"[4]week, as you know. The men came from all quarters of the land,
and we had a good time. New work is opening; old work is going
well; the fellowship ran in good tide---except that everybody
asked everybody else: "What do you know about Alderman?"
Everybody who had late news of you gave a good report. The Southern
Board formally passed a resolution to send affectionate greetings
to you and high hope and expectation, and I was commissioned
to frame the message. This is it. I shall write no formal resolution,
for that wasn't the spirit of it. The fellows all asked me, singly
and collectively, to send their love. And we don't put that sort
of a message under whereases and wherefores. There
they were, every one of them, except Peabody and Bowie. Mr. Ogden
in particular was anxious for his emphatic remembrance and good
wishes to go. The dear old man is fast passing into the last
stage of his illness and he knows it and he soon expects the
end, in a mood as brave and as game as he ever was. I am sorry
to tell you he suffers a good deal of pain.

What a fine thing to look back over---this Southern Board's
work! Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty years ago, then
fifty-seven years old, who saw this big job as a modest layman.
If he had known more about "Education" or more about
"the South, bygawd, sir!" he'd never have had the courage
to tackle the job. But with the bravery of ignorance, he turned
out to be the wisest man on that task in our generation. He has
united every real, good force, and he showed what can be done
in a democracy even by one zealous man. I've sometimes thought
that this is possibly the wisest single piece of work that I
have ever seen done---wisest, not smartest. I don't know what
can be done when he's gone. His phase of it is really done. But,
if another real leader arise, there will doubtless be another
phase.

The General Board doesn't find much more college-endowing
to do. We made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get
the country school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it
yet; but we will. Buttrick and Rose will work it out. I wish
to God I could throw down my practical job and go at it with
'em. Darned if I couldn't get it going! though I say it, as shouldn't.
And we are going pretty soon to begin with the medical colleges;
that, I think, is good---very.

But the most efficient workmanlike piece of organization that
my mortal eyes have ever seen is Rose's hookworm work. We're
going soon to organize country life in a sanitary way, the county
health officer being the biggest man on the horizon. Stiles has
moved his marine hospital and his stall to Wilmington, North
Carolina, and he and the local health men are quietly going to
make New Hanover the model county for sanitary condition and
efficiency. You'll know what a vast revolution that denotes!---And
Congress seems likely to charter the big Rockefeller Foundation,
which will at once make five millions available for chasing the
hookworm off the face of the earth. Rose will spread himself
over Honduras, etc., etc., and China, and India! This does literally
beat the devil; for, if the hookworm isn't the devil, what is?

I'm going to farming. I've two brothers and two sons, all
young and strong, who believe in the game. We have land without
end, thousands of acres; engines to pull stumps, to plough, to
plant, to reap. The nigger go hang! A white boy with an engine
can outdo a dozen of 'em. Cotton and corn for staple crops; peaches,
figs, scuppernongs, vegetables, melons for incidental crops;
God's good air in North Carolina; good roads, too---why, man,
Moore County has authorized the laying out of a strip of land
along all highways to be planted in shrubbery and fruit trees
and kept as a park, so that you will motor for 100 miles through
odorous bloom in spring !---I mean I am going down there to-morrow
for a month, one day for golf at Pinehurst, the next day for
clearing land with an oil locomotive, ripping up stumps! Every
day for life out-of-doors and every night, too. I'm going dasheens.
You know what a dasheen is? It's a Trinidad potato, which keeps
and tastes like a sweet potato stuffed with chestnuts. There
are lots of things to learn in this world.

God bless us all, old man. It's a pretty good world, whether
seen from the petty excitements of reforming the world and dreaming
of a diseaseless earth in New York, or from the stump-pulling
recreation of a North Carolina wilderness.

Health be with you!

W. H. P.

.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, L. I.
March 10, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills
of North Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a
home at least for winter use; and I had the most instructive
and interesting month of my life there. I believe I see, even
in my life-time, the coming of a kind of man and a kind of life
that shall come pretty near to being the model American citizen
and the model American way to live. Half of it is climate; a
fourth of it occupation; the other fourth, companionship. And
the climate (with what it does) is three fourths companionship.

Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President---a
very impressive experience indeed. The future ---God knows; but
I believe in Wilson very thoroughly. Men fool him yet. Men fool
us all. He has already made some mistakes. But he's sound. And,
if we have moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little
and big---I mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four
years hence, to keep them back, I think that we shall now really
work toward a democratic government. I have a stronger confidence
in government now as an I instrument of human progress than I
have ever had before. And I find it an exhilarating and exciting
experience.

I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia,
and Washington. How we all do love you, old man! Don't forget
that, in your successful fight. And, with my affectionate greetings
to Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress.

Always affectionately yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

.

To Edwin A. Alderman

On the Baltic, New York to Liverpool,
May 19, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last
weeks at home---every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff
to see you. At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was
impossible to go. But it was. I set down five different days
in my calendar for this use; and somehow every one of them was
taken. Two were taken by unexpected calls to Washington. Another
was taken by my partners who arranged a little good-bye dinner.
Another was taken by the British Ambassador---and so on. Absurd---of
course it was absurd, and I feel now as if it approached the
criminal. But every stolen day I said, "Well, I'll find
another." But another never came.

But good news of you came by many hands and mouths. My congratulations,
my cheers, my love, old man. Now when you do take up work again,
don't take up all the work. Show the fine virtue called self-restraint.
We work too much and too hard and do too many things even when
we are well. There are three titled Englishmen who sit at the
table with me on this ship---one a former Lord Mayor of London,
another a peer, and the third an M. P. Damn their self-sufficiencies!
They do excite my envy. They don't shoulder the work of
the world: they shoulder the world and leave---the work to be
done by somebody else. Three days' stories and political discussion
with them have made me wonder why the devil I've been so industrious
all my life. They know more than I know; they are richer than
I am; they have been about the world more than I have; they are
far more influential than I am; and yet one of them asked me
to-day if George Washington was a born American! I said to him,
"Where the devil do you suppose he came from---Hades? "
And he laughed at himself as heartily as the rest of us laughed
at him, and didn't care a hang!

If that's British, I've a mind to become British; and, the,
point is, you must, too. Work is a curse. There was some truth
in that old doctrine. At any rate a little of it must henceforth
go a long way with you.

A sermon? Yes. But, since it's a good one, I know you'll forgive
me; for it is preached in love, my dear boy, and accompanied
with the hearty and insistent hope that you'll write to me.

Affectionately,

WALTER PAGE.

This last letter apparently anticipates the story. A few weeks
before it was written President Wilson had succeeded in carrying
out his determination to make Page an important part of his Administration.
One morning Page's telephone rang and Colonel House's well-known
and well-modulated voice came over the wire.

"Good morning, Your Excellency," was his greeting.

"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Page.
Then Colonel House explained himself. The night before, he said,
he had dined at the White House. In a pause of the conversation
the President had quietly remarked:

"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page to England.
What do you think of that?"

Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the result
of his conversation was this telephone call, in which he was authorized
to offer Page the Ambassadorship to Great Britain.

↑Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Washington University of St. Louis.